PHP template not rendering to PHP page - php

Question

I'm trying to make a PHP template without any libraries or frameworks, in order to understand templating. The template is of a <select> that displays a list of all the countries. It was fully working before I templated it, so the issue is not with the <select> element logic.
However, the select template is not rendering to the page.
Here is my code:
country_select.php:
<?php
class CountrySelect {
static $template = 'country_select_template.php';
public static function display() {
if ( class_exists( 'View' ) ) {
// Get the full path to the template file.
$templatePath = dirname( __FILE__ ) . static::$template;
// Return the rendered HTML
return View::render( $templatePath );
}
else {
return "You are trying to render a template, but we can't find the View Class";
}
}
}
?>
country_select_template.php:
<div class="form-group col-sm-6">
<div class="select">
<span class="arr"></span>
<select data-bind="options: _countries,
optionsText: 'name',
optionsValue: 'geonameId',
value: selectedCountry,
optionsCaption: 'Country'">
</select>
</div>
</div>
view.php:
<?php
/** View.php **/
class View {
/**
* -------------------------------------
* Render a Template.
* -------------------------------------
*
* #param $filePath - include path to the template.
* #param null $viewData - any data to be used within the template.
* #return string -
*
*/
public static function render( $filePath, $viewData = null ) {
// Was any data sent through?
( $viewData ) ? extract( $viewData ) : null;
ob_start();
include ( $filePath );
$template = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $template;
}
}
?>
view_renderer.php:
<?php
require('view.php');
?>
Here is the relevant code from the php page where I try to render the template. Notice that the "region_select" is not yet templated, that is how my "country_select used to look.
<div class="row">
<?php
require 'scripts/back_end/views/country_select.php';
require 'scripts/back_end/views/view.php';
View::render('country_select_template.php');
?>
<div class="form-group col-sm-6">
<div class="select">
<span class="arr"></span>
<select data-bind="options: _regions,
optionsText: 'name',
optionsValue: 'name',
value: selectedCity,
optionsCaption: 'Region'">
</select>
</div>
</div>
How do I get the html in country_select_template to render to the page? The calling code that is supposed to initiate the template to render to the page is
<?php
require 'scripts/back_end/views/country_select.php';
require 'scripts/back_end/views/view.php';
View::render('country_select_template.php');
?>
I have changed the calling code to:
<?php
require 'scripts/back_end/views/country_select.php';
require 'scripts/back_end/views/view.php';
echo View::render('country_select_template.php');
?>
I see I have this error in the php error logs:
[15-Feb-2016 09:33:35 Europe/Berlin] PHP Warning:
require(scripts/back_end/views/country_select.php): failed to open
stream: No such file or directory in
/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/its_vegan/index.php on line 92 [15-Feb-2016
09:33:35 Europe/Berlin] PHP Fatal error: require(): Failed opening
required 'scripts/back_end/views/country_select.php'
(include_path='.:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php7.0.0/lib/php') in
/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/its_vegan/index.php on line 92

Answer 1

View::render returns the code. It does not print it.
So I think this should do it:
<?php
require 'scripts/back_end/views/country_select.php';
require 'scripts/back_end/views/view.php';
echo View::render('country_select_template.php');
?>